A club with as long of a history as us, has tried many approaches to grassing the course. We have had no less than 4 grasses put into fairways, almost 7 types of rough grass and yet we still have issues of keeping it alive and playable. Why? As many heard me speak about the needs for renovation, golf courses are highly maintained playing surfaces, with a lot of conditions not seen at other arenas. It's not a lawn, where you have one maybe two types of grass on a small patch with little to no traffic. In fact many home lawns don't grow at the same rates from the front to back yard, just due to the slight environment change around the house. The sunny front starts first while the shady back yard is slow to green up. I doubt most have the same plants in their flowers beds all around the house, some for shade others for sun.
A golf course has a multiple of growing zones, and within those a multiple of grasses. I'm not that good at statistics, but pair those two multiples up and throw in temperature swings and the possibilities are staggering. Coupled with this are a few aggressive weedy types (poa annua and trivialis) and then a few warm season grasses, like 4 different varieties of Bermuda, and you can see until nature has decided to stop the roller coaster ride known as spring, everyone wakes up like your kids.... at different times.
The above picture is the collar at the 14th green. It contains 4 different grasses, Creeping bent; Poa annua; Poa trivialis; and Perennial ryegrass. There are variety differences within those 4 grasses. All mowed the same but growing at different rates. We begin to use a growth regulator to even this out, but only once we know the growing process has started for all the grasses. Setting back a species this early in the season can lead to longer term issues in the summer.
This picture of the 15th hole indicates why we are advocates of renovation. This shows all our warts in one simple picture. All the grass types we have are in this one photo. Notice the only grass I have been responsible for planting is the strip on the left, outside the fairway. That is turf type tall fescue in a uniform stand. Playable, attractive and uniform. The area to the right is everything you could put into a blender. This has been decades in the making. All attempts at trying to find a grass that best fits our climate, course, topography and play. It's not easy, farmers get to rotate out their crops every few years. Plant all new seed varieties and try again. Not the same when your planting, nurturing and maintaining a playing surface and come to find out a few years later it might have been wrong, or a newer type is better. You can't simply dig it up and start over like a soccer or football field, we just try to make it more playable even though it isn't adapting to the local conditions.
Do we have all the answers for the new course? We are using all the tools available to minimize any missteps, research has come a long ways, but you don't get to try out everything everywhere on your course. There is no Amazon Prime return policy. We make the best educated decisions possible, consult with everyone imaginable and look at all the options. We consider those factors that affect the members and the playing conditions, and those that advantage the maintenance to keep these new conditions great as long as possible.
We wish there was a simple book to consult and make it happen, but this is nature and that book is constantly being rewritten.
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